


off-kilt

by aparticularbandit



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:49:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25075651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aparticularbandit/pseuds/aparticularbandit
Summary: fourth of july one-shot for their anniversary.
Relationships: Luisa Alver/Rose Solano
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	off-kilt

**Author's Note:**

> happy roisa anniversary, y'all.

three years have passed since their fateful first meeting.

this isn’t true, but it feels that way. every month feels like more than twice as long, longer than it ever would feel if it had only been a one night stand with no future encounters and only the occasional wondering about what the other might be doing. no, that wistful wondering has been replaced with knowing _exactly_ what the redhead is doing, being forced to see her on her father’s arm at what seems like every opportunity, and taking those moments that might be spent fondly remembering their singular encounter and idly wondering about how future encounters might have looked and twisting them into images of the woman and her father together, destroying the little joy she would have had – and still struggled to have – from that fateful day.

all in all, it has only been a year, but it feels unending, like it must be longer.

today, her brother is engaged to a woman he swiped from her engagement to the man he believes their father thinks is more worthy of his sonship. it’s not entirely an act, even though it must appear that way from the outside and even though it did truthfully begin that way – her brother _does_ truly love the other woman. she has thought to perhaps steal the idea from him – one he stole outright from her and how she once seduced his women away from him – but there’s a certain level of—

her father would never forgive her for bringing rose back where she belongs. she has already lost her mother. she cannot afford to lose him, too. rafael is no comfort in these matters, not because he doesn’t know, but because she knows that any further communication they would have after she succeeded – and she _would_ succeed, taking rose back wouldn’t be hard if she put her body to it – would be under the radar, swept under the rug, under their father’s suspicions because he has spent too long trying to earn their father’s love and respect to throw it all away by blatantly endorsing the sister who literally stole their father’s wife.

_wife._

the word burns bitter on her tongue. vodka is really the only thing that burns it away, and she isn’t supposed to be having that. it doesn’t mean she doesn’t. she’s just gotten better at hiding it.

in truth, she hasn’t gotten better at hiding it. everyone is just so focused on everything else that they aren’t looking to see it. perhaps that’s for the best. she wouldn’t want to ruin their celebrating. they deserve to have their moments of happiness.

but then again, so does she.

it has been a year and luisa has locked herself up in her room at the hotel rafael chose for his engagement party. it’s small – one of the usual rooms and not a suite because she does not intend to be here long if she does not have to be and because she has – _had_ – no intention of bringing a woman to her bed right now. she _intends_ to be a drunken mess long before she gets to sleep, she _intends_ to be so drunk that she doesn’t remember what happened, and she _intends_ to make sure she is locked in her room for the entirety of that because she doesn’t want to worry her family.

she settles on her bed with a bottle of vodka and turns the flat screen on, idly flipping through channels to try and find one to keep her brain at least partially occupied. none of it looks entertaining, which is the low bar. certainly none of it looks _good_. she opens her bottle of vodka, unwrapping the seal at the top, and stops just short of her first drink to a knocking on her door.

maybe if she is quiet enough, the knocking will end and whoever is on the other side will leave her to her own devices.

she slowly sets the bottle of vodka on the bedside table as the knocking begins again and settles herself in for a good long wait. she can be quiet when she has to be.

the knocking comes a third time, and luisa has never been good at keeping her mouth shut.

“no one’s here!” she calls. “and whatever you’re selling, we don’t want any!” it’s a haphazard second thought, born of witticisms told to familiar faces on the other side of her apartment door, when she would at least make it to the peephole and see who was there, when the words were an indication that she _would_ let them in, eventually, she just wanted to give them a hard time first.

this time, when the knock came a fourth time, luisa propped herself up off of the mattress – which gave a slightly too loud squeak for a bed at one of her father’s hotels – and padded over on bare feet to the door. where there was carpet, it was a little too rough – she would need to tell him the rooms should be recarpeted so that they would have that softer feel that he liked so much better – and where there was tile, it was stark freezing cold – the air conditioner was on a little too high and there wasn’t a thermostat in the room to change that. this was one of her father’s first hotels. it could use a facelift. there wasn’t even a peephole for her to see who was on the other side of the door. well. she left the chain locked so that she only had to open it a crack.

in the future, she would come to expect the redheaded woman standing on the other side, but this was only their first year out, and so she could not know to expect it, could not have learned to rely on this yearly lapse in judgment.

“rose?” she murmured, her eyes narrowing. “what are you doing here?”

of course, the other woman didn’t answer her question. rose was never about answering anything. all of her cards were kept close to her ample soft curvaceous chest. not that luisa was looking at her chest. or thinking about it. or anything like that at all. instead, she was trying her hardest to keep her eyes on rose’s – harder because when she looked into rose’s eyes, she started feeling like she was falling again – it was always falling since she’d found out rose and her father were an item, but that first time, she had felt like she was flying – so she picked a spot on the wall just behind her and looked at that instead. there was a crack. she could pretend it was some sort of animal – like a bunny. it didn’t look like a bunny.

“aren’t you going to let me in?”

in the future, luisa would answer in a lot of different ways. sometimes, they would be an incensed, frustrated, _why should i?_ but she isn’t far enough gone for that. this is the first year and the first time rose has come to her at all, the first time they could actually truly be alone because luisa has been avoiding it and sometimes she’s felt like rose has been avoiding it, too. her lips press together and she shuts the door. there are a few clicks as she removes the chain and opens the door to the younger woman.

when rose shuts the door, it is with a _do not disturb_ sign swinging on its handle and the chain lock back in its place, although luisa does not notice either of those until much, much later.

“can i get you a drink?” luisa asks, and she gestures with one hand to the bottle of vodka still resting on her bedside table. “only i don’t have any cups, so you’ll have to share one with me. i hope that isn’t too much trouble.” there’s tile at the entryway and carpet in the main room and more tile when you reach the sink and the bathroom, even though luisa hasn’t touched those yet (but she knows to expect she might need a trip to the porcelain palace once she’s drunk – she usually isn’t so far gone as to need it, her stomach is ironclad, but this time, knowing how much she was expecting to let herself go, it was good to know where the thing was ahead of time). she collapses on her bed. “and tell dad he needs to fix this place up. he could make good money off of it if it looked better.”

“i think he is planning on letting your brother do that,” rose says, twisting one of her red curls around one finger. “a good practice run for something bigger later. he’s mentioned it a few times.” she moves closer toward the bed but not close enough. never really close enough. “i didn’t come to talk about him.”

luisa tries to maintain focus on the tv. she’d left it on – idle background noise – and it’s easier than trying to focus on rose. ask her later, and she won’t remember what channel she was on or what show was playing. ask her now, and she couldn’t tell you anyway. she’s only half paying attention. “why are you here, then? isn’t there a party? shouldn’t you be with my father?”

“he’s left for some important business that just can’t wait.” there’s a hint of a smirk at the edge of rose’s lips, and luisa doesn’t know it yet, but this becomes a yearly pattern. her father is always called away on the fourth of july. sometimes she wonders if rose arranges it that way, given the trust her father has actually given her in terms of his hotel business. rose is whip smart. sometimes luisa thinks she could do anything if she just put her mind to it. she hates thinking that way, though. her father always thought that of her – still does, in fact – and she doesn’t like the weight of knowing she cannot and never will live up to it. her father always wanted her to be a lawyer, but she couldn’t close her heart that much. besides, if she’d crippled under the weight of trying to be a surgeon, she doesn’t want to think about what trying to be a lawyer would have done to her.

she might have met rose sooner. before rose ever met her father. she might have not had to worry about this masquerade.

she doesn’t like to think about it.

“and you thought you would come see me?” luisa asks as uninterested as she can pretend to be. she can see that it doesn’t work because she has never been good at that kind of lying. doesn’t matter if she’s _good_ at lying if her family expects her to be a little off-kilt anyway. just spin everything in that off-kilt manner and they believe her anyway. she’s not off-kilt now. she’s a little too sober for her own liking.

rose hesitates and then moves to sit on the edge of the bed. “of course, i came to visit you,” she said, and she reaches over, across luisa, to take the remote and turn the tv off. “it’s our anniversary, after all. i wanted to spend it with you.”

there’s a moment where luisa knows what’s about to happen. she knows the proper procedures and the ways of being and that really she should be saying no. but luisa has never been very good about saying no, and she’s learned just as readily that she’s not very good at saying no to _rose_. when rose brushes a strand of hair out of her face, she shifts up and away, back against the headboard, and when rose leans forward just enough to kiss her so gently, she parts her lips against hers and lets out a breath that she feels like she’s been holding for three years even though it’s really only been one.

her hand finds its way into rose’s curls, and the vodka bottle is forgotten until a month later when her father returns and things have to go back to normal, only her eyes find rose’s across the room a little too often and rose avoids her gaze a little too often but now the secret between them has grown to become _secrets_ and it’s not really a life, but it’s an imitation of one. something like it.

she’s succeeded just like her brother has. she’s stolen rose just like her brother stole his fiancée. only this is not so complete. it’s a little muddled, a little off-kilt.

that is her entire life so far. why should this be any different?


End file.
